My husband and I, along with family and friends, have built this home from the ground up. It has taken a lot longer than we anticipated, but this is one family project we will never forget.

I love everything about the house. The bedrooms are all a nice size. The kitchen is great and has turned out to be my favorite part of the house.

After deciding to build the house, we built the shell of the home out of beetle kill pine logs. Since our family business is logging, it seemed like the most economical thing to do. After picking out and measuring every single log, we peeled them by hand. My husband and my father then carved every notch with a chainsaw or by hand. After several months the shell was complete.

We then finished the roof and the internal walls with regular framing materials. Almost all of the finishing lumber inside the house came from my uncle’s sawmill. My husband is making all cupboards and vanities out of the beetle kill pine. This is also a very long process, but they look great with the rest of the house.

The house is not quite done yet. We started building in May of 2009 and will be complete by May of 2010. This sounds like a long time, but since we only work one to two days a week on it, but I think we are making good progress.

We’re very happy with the way our home is turning out and would DEFINITELY recommend House Plan Gallery plans to anyone…

Author:About Mark Mathis

Mark Mathis is the co-owner of House Plan Gallery, one of the nation's top home design firms.
Mark has been involved in the home design industry for over 20 years, and holds a B.S. in Finance & Real Estate from the University of Southern Mississippi, and an M.B.A. in Marketing from Louisiana State University.
Mark is a Christian, married to Lesley Mathis, and has three awesome boys - Jake, Ben, & Grant. In his rare spare time, he loves sports, guitars, and doing anything outdoors.

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We used House Plan to design and produce plans for a house we built in North Texas. We were happy with the speed of service, attention to detail and the end result. We love our house. The design was a joint collaboration based on what we wanted and House Plan’s ability to interpret that utilizes reality with our dream.

After finding a plan that was close to what we wanted, the design staff was able to incorporate several changes to make the plan EXACTLY what we wanted. We’ve been in the house now almost 5 years and I wouldn’t change a thing and nearly everyone who comes to our house says what a great layout it is.